Bush wants the UN to clean up his mess: Fuck HIM!

[Odesio]

*Originally posted by Boo Boo Foo *
**No dramas MGibson - forgive me for overshooting there a moment ago. I totally misinterpreted your sentiments the wrong way. Please accept my apologies.

**

Not a problem. It can be difficult to figure out the tone of someone’s post. I didn’t mean to come off as a jerk.

Marc

[Odesio]

*Originally posted by Dissonance *
** In order to attain the 5-5-3 ratio between the US, Britain, and Japan, the US and Britain had to scrap a lot more actual warships and break up a lot more new construction while it was still on the slips than Japan did.

**

Didn’t the United States scrap a bunch of old junk they didn’t want around anyway?

Marc

[Seven]

*Originally posted by rjung *
**I seriously doubt the typical Iraqi thinks his country is safer now than six months ago. **

I bet just like in the USA, it’s worse.

[SentientMeat]

Brutus

Crack 'em in the nose hard now, and you won’t have unsurmountable problems later. The British… were masters of this, as they were massively outnumbered in all of their possesions, and I can count on one hand how many they lost

An occupying force who were initially welcomed as liberators from tyranny. A growing sentiment of “Hey, we could do this ourselves”. Growing disenchantment with said occupation and calls for them to leave. Protests.

At this point, you have advocated lethal force.

A number of civilians are killed. The “we ourselves” sentiment becomes so strong that armed resistance against the liberators begins with popular support. Strikes break out with popular support. Internment and strike-breaking lead only to further resentment and bloodshed.

The Irish for “we ourselves” is Sinn Fein. Over the 3 decades of Troubles, more than 1,000 soldiers were lost. You must have big hands.

Good luck.

[spogga]

What the hell is it with you guys?
GWB did what he thought was right and make no mistake about it he WAS right in going to war against Iraq.
Given half a chance those fucking dipsticks would have set off nukes all over the sodding place.

So far as I’m concerned the US/UK did what they had to do, no two ways about it.

Get off Bush’s back, he is your ELECTED president or would you rather Billy boy came back…now that was one president you didn’t need.

[SentientMeat]

Given half a chance those fucking dipsticks would have set off nukes all over the sodding place.

spogga, I know this is not GD, but do you have any documentation or evidence supporting this conjecture whatsoever? If so, I’d suggest you give it to our conservative prime minister ASAP.

[spogga]

SM: No I don’t have any evidence to support it but you know full well that even if Saddam didn’t have nukes before the start of the war it would only have been a matter of time before he had.

Don’t forget he already used nerve gas against his own countrymen, any fucking megolomaniac that does that wouldn’t have hesitated to use nukes … AND YOU KNOW IT!!

[Desmostylus]

*Originally posted by spogga *
**Don’t forget he already used nerve gas against his own countrymen, any fucking megolomaniac that does that wouldn’t have hesitated to use nukes … AND YOU KNOW IT!! **

At the time it happened, U.S. intelligence concluded that it was actually the Iranians that gassed the Kurds, and it was pretty much unintended.

Sure, Bush said otherwise, but he has this habit of making shit up.

[spogga]

*Originally posted by Who_me? *
**Yes, but isn’t Brutus telling us that the Iraqis can have any government they want… as long as it’s also the government the US wants? **

Just what exactly is wrong with that?

For Gods sake the Americans have taken enough shit from every pissant little country who thinks it’s real brave to burn a Star Spangle Banner.

Fuck the Arabs and their puerile antics, they really piss me off.:mad:

[spogga]

*Originally posted by Desmostylus *
**At the time it happened, U.S. intelligence concluded that it was actually the Iranians that gassed the Kurds, and it was pretty much unintended.

Sure, Bush said otherwise, but he has this habit of making shit up. **

UNINTENDED!? How the hell can the gassing of thousands be unintended.

Keerist, next you’ll be telling us the Nazis didn’t really mean to gas 6 million…it was all a mistake.

[RedFury]

*Originally posted by spogga *
**Just what exactly is wrong with that?

For Gods sake the Americans have taken enough shit from every pissant little country who thinks it’s real brave to burn a Star Spangle Banner.

Fuck the Arabs and their puerile antics, they really piss me off.:mad: **

Ah yes, great to have a new bigot on board. Why is it they tend to fall on Dubya’s camp?

Welcome to the SDMB – and fuck you too, asshole.

[Gary_Kumquat]

*Originally posted by spogga *
UNINTENDED!? How the hell can the gassing of thousands be unintended.

Pretty easy really. Strangely enough with gas all it takes is a change of wind direction and instead of gassing an iraqi division to the south you take out an innocent kurdish town to the north.

[yojimbo]

spogga how do you feel about the man who was voted Greatest Britain being called a fucking megolomaniac? BTW the Kurds were as much Saddam’s people as I was.

Churchill was in no doubt that gas could be profitably employed against the Kurds and Iraqis (as well as against other peoples in the Empire): I do not understand this sqeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes. Henry Wilson shared Churchills enthusiasm for gas as an instrument of colonial control but the British cabinet was reluctant to sanction the use of a weapon that had caused such misery and revulsion in the First World War.

I’ve see this info also talked about i9n several docu’s about the time.

http://www.iraqwar.org/chemical.htm

[Liberal]

*Originally posted by Gary Kumquat *
**Pretty easy really. Strangely enough with gas all it takes is a change of wind direction and instead of gassing an iraqi division to the south you take out an innocent kurdish town to the north. **

Dear God. :eek: You’ve taken denial to new heights.

[SentientMeat]

you know full well that even if Saddam didn’t have nukes before the start of the war it would only have been a matter of time before he had…Don’t forget he already used nerve gas against his own countrymen, any fucking megolomaniac that does that wouldn’t have hesitated to use nukes … AND YOU KNOW IT!!

Thank you for telling me what I know. Unfortunately, not being a simple-mided gullible dolt, I must inform you that my chosen epistemeology requires evidence before advocating something like the invasion of a foreign state.

As for the nerve gas: Look at this picture again. Recognise him? In March 1984, the day that the UN released a report condemning Iraq’s use of poisonous gas against Iranian troops, Rumsfeld was meeting with Saddam’s Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz. Please answer this question, spogga: If using nerve gas warranted regime-changing invasion, why did the US continue supporting Saddam?

It may also interest you to know that Arabs only come from Arabia. They are not the sole non-Jewish inhabitants of the entire Middle East, rather one single ethnicity amongst dozens. Do you join Brutus in advocating lethal force against civilian protests aimed at establishing a Shia-dominated theocratic government?

And, Gary, what happened at Halabja in 1988 was very definitely not collateral damage from combat:

In all, around 4,000 Kurdish villages were systematically destroyed and scores of thousands of Kurds were killed, many of them liquidated in mass executions.

Please do not provide easy targets for ignoramuses to attack, allowing them to avoid the real questions.

[yojimbo]

All I see is Gary answering a query as to how a gas attack could go wrong. He doesn’t say that is what happened in this particualr case.

[SentientMeat]

I believe Desy’s point was that US intelligence tried to blame it on the Iranians because they’d helped to supply components for the chemical weapons in the first place.

[Desmostylus]

That wasn’t my point, SentientMeat.

Here’s the original source, the NYT story A War Crime Or an Act of War?, but you have to pay for it and all that’s left now is the abstract:

Op-Ed article by Stephen C Pelletiere, senior CIA political analyst on Iraq during Iran-Iraq war, lays out facts in allegation that Saddam Hussein gassed Iraqi Kurds in Halabja in March 1988; says all that is known for certain is that Kurds were hit with poison gas that day, during battle with Iranians; explains that US Defense Intelligence Agency’s report found both sides used gas during battle, and blamed Iranians for Kurdish deaths; notes Kurds died of cyanide-based gas that Iran, but not Iraq, had at time; explains that Iran sought control of key dam near Halabja, part of impressive Iraqi waterway system that is most extensive in Mideast; adds that Bush administration owes Americans full facts before going to war

A copy of the article can be found here:

But the truth is, all we know for certain is that Kurds were bombarded with poison gas that day at Halabja. We cannot say with any certainty that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds. This is not the only distortion in the Halabja story.

I am in a position to know because, as the Central Intelligence Agency’s senior political analyst on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, and as a professor at the Army War College from 1988 to 2000, I was privy to much of the classified material that flowed through Washington having to do with the Persian Gulf. In addition, I headed a 1991 Army investigation into how the Iraqis would fight a war against the United States; the classified version of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.

This much about the gassing at Halabja we undoubtedly know: it came about in the course of a battle between Iraqis and Iranians. Iraq used chemical weapons to try to kill Iranians who had seized the town, which is in northern Iraq not far from the Iranian border. The Kurdish civilians who died had the misfortune to be caught up in that exchange. But they were not Iraq’s main target.

And the story gets murkier: immediately after the battle the United States Defense Intelligence Agency investigated and produced a classified report, which it circulated within the intelligence community on a need-to-know basis. That study asserted that it was Iranian gas that killed the Kurds, not Iraqi gas.

The agency did find that each side used gas against the other in the battle around Halabja. The condition of the dead Kurds’ bodies, however, indicated they had been killed with a blood agent — that is, a cyanide-based gas — which Iran was known to use. The Iraqis, who are thought to have used mustard gas in the battle, are not known to have possessed blood agents at the time.

These facts have long been in the public domain but, extraordinarily, as often as the Halabja affair is cited, they are rarely mentioned. A much-discussed article in The New Yorker last March did not make reference to the Defense Intelligence Agency report or consider that Iranian gas might have killed the Kurds. On the rare occasions the report is brought up, there is usually speculation, with no proof, that it was skewed out of American political favoritism toward Iraq in its war against Iran.

I am not trying to rehabilitate the character of Saddam Hussein. He has much to answer for in the area of human rights abuses. But accusing him of gassing his own people at Halabja as an act of genocide is not correct, because as far as the information we have goes, all of the cases where gas was used involved battles. These were tragedies of war. There may be justifications for invading Iraq, but Halabja is not one of them.

[SentientMeat]

Interesting, Des. I would suggest that a new thread begins in GD if this is to continue. However, if the BBC is correct with “4000 villages” and “mass executions” then a few wayward chemical shells is hardly a full explanation. Furthermore, gassing all of Halabja to neutralise the enemy within a captured town is, in my view, akin to the simple premeditated gassing of civilians in any case.

[sailor]

The claims by the USA that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy becaused he used gas are extremely hypocritical. It is a well-known and documented fact that the USA aided Iraq in its use of poison gas against Iran. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/0818-02.htm